The Model Curriculum along with the standards is intended to guide arts educators and school districts as they design instructional lessons and local courses of study. The 16 links that follow provide access to the curriculum model by arts discipline and grade cluster.
Music Learning Standards 1. National Core Arts Standards. Curriculum Mapping: Forming Essential Questions for Elementary Music Class - Music & Technology -MusTech.NetMusic & Technology -MusTech.Net.

This week, I started updating my curriculum maps because 1) it was time, 2) the curriculum format had changed, and 3) the standards had recently changed in the past two years.

The newest item in the mapping program was to add essential questions to each unit. What is an essential question? An essential question is one that cannot be answered with one answer. An essential question has several different answers that change over time. It also does not need to be answered in one lesson since the question can be an overarching question.
Flush with Funding, Flocabulary Will Let Students Write Their Own Rhymes. When y=mx+b, b is the y-intercept, you’ll see.

M is the slope, the rise over run. They’ll wait until we stop, but that day will never come. That’s a line from “ Linear Equations,” from Flocabulary, a New York City-based startup that makes catchy educational hip-hop videos. Soon, students may be able to write their own hot verses as they practice Cartesian coordinates: Flocabulary is adding composition features.
Music & Technology -MusTech.Net - Developed by Joseph M. Pisano, Ph.D.Music & Technology -MusTech.Net. BBC's Ten Pieces brings classical music to new generation. The BBC has today announced a new initiative for UK primary schools that aims to inspire a generation of children to enjoy classical music and use it as a stimulus to their own creativity.

Ten pieces of classical music - some short, some selected extracts of longer works - have been chosen to represent a range of western classical music and provide good entry points into it. Children will be introduced to the works through a specially made film that uses a mix of live action and animation that will be screened in UK cinemas in October 2014. During the autumn term, children will then be asked to respond creatively to the music through their own compositions, dance, digital art or animation.

Six ambassadors - Nicola Benedetti, Alison Balsom, Cerys Matthews, Laura Mvula, Julian Joseph and Catrin Finch will be going into schools to help children engage with the project, and the BBC's Performing Groups will also be travelling across the country to give workshops and perform the pieces.
Modes and Video Games Music. There's a very useful classification of music which helps explain why pieces sound dramatically more happy or sad: the major and minor scales.

The major scale is the staging ground for most of the peaceful or upbeat music you'll hear, whereas the minor is a little darker and used for more music with some conflict or sorrow inherent to it. Darth Vader's theme from Star Wars and Captain Jack Sparrow's theme from Pirates of the Caribbean are both written in a minor key, and the major key dominates the lullaby scene and most tension free music. The reason music sounds so different depending on which scale it's written in has to do with the different notes that make up the scales, the minor scale has a few lowered notes which give it a less pleasant sound. The vast majority of music falls into one of those two categories, and our system of musical notation is designed around the properties of those two types of scales.

If you haven’t had the opportunity to reboot, retool and renew your own plans, there is still time to be intentional and take steps toward a productive and fulfilling year. Here are some sample questions for each category to jump start your reflection. Grab a journal and write! Develop Craft In your educational practice, what is your strongest area?
Digital Assessment Tools for Arts Integration and STEAM. Digital Assessment Tools for Arts Integration and STEAM If you’ve ever been overwhelmed with assessing an arts integrated lesson, you’re not alone.

Authentic assessment of students’ skills, understanding and application is hard enough. Trying to do it across multiple content areas in a way that equitably assesses both content areas is even more challenging.
Transforming the Blues iPad GarageBand Lesson. Transforming The Blues Free iPad GarageBand Project The 12 Bar Blues in a Tango Style?

If you’re looking for a blues activity that’s a little different – and you have some iPads you can use during class – you might like to ask students to “transform the blues” using the GarageBand app. This lesson invites students to come up with their own unique take on the blues: record the blues pattern in a tango style, or a romantic style, or grunge style and then record a blues solo over the top of their backing. Related: 41 Free Resources For Teaching The 12 Bar Blues.

A Musical Fix for American Schools. American education is in perpetual crisis.

Our students are falling ever farther behind their peers in the rest of the world. Learning disabilities have reached epidemic proportions, affecting as many as one in five of our children. Illiteracy costs American businesses $80 billion a year. Many solutions have been tried, but few have succeeded.
Piano Chord Dictionary Online Piano Chords. Student Assessment Using Model Cornerstone Assessments - National Association for Music Education (NAfME)

Music Teachers: We Need You!

Student Assessment.
Explore Rhythm and Meter With the Chrome Music Lab - Teaching With Orff. Evaluating Guitar Performance: Using a Comprehensive Assessment for Your Students - National Association for Music Education (NAfME)
By NAfME Member Christopher J. PerezDirector – Freedom High School Guitar Program, Orlando, FL “The approach to what you do, results in what you get . . . ”Freddie Gruber (1927-2011)—Drummer and Master Teacher. Sibelius Tips for Kodaly Teachers. The Kodály concept (or method) is an approach to music education developed by Hungarian composer and educator Zoltan Kodaly during the mid-twentieth century. Teachers using Sibelius to create teaching resources for Kodály lessons need to know a unique set of skills, so I’ve chosen a few of my favourite Kodaly-related Sibelius “tricks” and explained them below.

Stick notation The Kodály method frequently uses stick notation – that is, rhythms written without noteheads (except for minims and semibreves). In Sibelius: 1. 2.
Clever Music Videos For Music Education - Christmas 2. Clever Music Videos Of The Week: Christmas 2 Here’s the second instalment of Christmas-themed Clever Music Videos. The are four videos this week because I couldn’t narrow them down. The Best Version of the Hallelujah Chorus The monks from “St Francis De La Sissies” perform their unique version of the Hallelujah Chorus.

There’s a very long introduction to this video, so I’ve linked to the place where the good bit starts! The Piano Guys: We Three Kings (great arrangement!)
More than 150 music notation images - free download. Images, Images, Images When creating resources for workshops and online courses I find myself constantly in need of images, images….and more images. First, there’s a need for images of music instruments, or composers, or snippets of scores, and there’s often a need for notation images. And I can be fussy when it comes to notation images: I really like the notes to be clear, crisp at the edges when enlarged and preferably with a transparent background (which means they can be easily placed on top of a stave without blocking out half of the staves lines).

So I decided to make some myself. Well, it started simple. 7 Easy Ways To Survive Technology in Your Music Classroom. 1. Practice. 15 Of The Best Music Technology Education Books. How do you keep up with music technology news?
Digital Portfolios in Music Education. Digital Portfolios in Music Education. Digital Portfolios in Music Education. Welcome to part 2B of the series about digital portfolios in music.
The Complete Guide to the Cup Song. Origins of the cup song. How To Beatbox – Boots ‘n Cats and Other Simple Sentences.

100+ Clever Music Videos To Show Students. 30+ Fun Ways to Teach The Notes Of The Staff. Professional development on-the-go: podcasts for music educators. Transforming the Blues iPad GarageBand Lesson. Digital Portfolios in Music Education. Staff Wars Notes of the Staff Game: Free Game Cars. Tips for Creating Arts Integrated Assessments. Inspiring and Fascinating TED Talks for music educators (part 1)
Music. NAfME ~ Lesson Plan Library.